Megan Magill was born in 1970 in Chicago, Illinois. From early on, she was interested in film and produced several vanguardist videos at age 12. She graduated in 1993 with a Bachelor's degree in Humanities from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her focus was on Art Theory and Film classes, including those taught by the experimental film director Stan Brakhage. Magill wrote her thesis on the Activist Art Movement that originated in response to the AIDS epidemic. In 2016, she graduated with an MFA from Maine Media College. 

Magill's studio practice began with her interest in family archives and image manipulation. That work was fueled by the need to examine the schism between one's lived experience and its visual representation and involved an extensive sourcing effort, mostly at antique stores. Broadly, it centered on personal stories of love and loss, anonymous or familiar. Magill also worked with experimental screenprinting using powdered graphite and charcoal before pivoting to oil painting in 2019. Her process involves selecting found photographs from her archive and identifying the source of her attraction for a certain grouping. Once a theme emerges, she creates a sketch and moves on to painting. The result develops from a dialogue between Magill and the painting. She applies the colors intuitively and prefers the hard surface of the wood panel, which allows her to paint spontaneously and wipe off areas that need reworking.

Magill is guided by visual impulse and the need to explore playful experiences of human connection. Her paintings tend to have large areas of bright, sometimes contrasting colors and feature characters in various states of distress. The surfaces may appear almost translucent due to the way ambient light is reflected by the painting medium. The brushwork varies from coarse and intentionally visible to smooth, creating an almost powder-like appearance.

Magill lives and works in Maine. Outside of her studio, she enjoys reading fiction, watching movies, spending time outdoors, and watching sports (except for golf and baseball, which she hopes will not be held against her). She does miss the Chicago movie theaters and tries to make time to go to one whenever she is in the city.